Do you find yourself getting aches and pains midway through your skiing/snowboarding holiday? Or do you just get tired and fatigued? Winter sports use your muscle groups in entirely different ways to our regular sports and hobbies, so it’s important to prepare your body in the right way before hitting the slopes. Injuries are extremely common amongst holiday makers who for 51 weeks of the year don’t even entertain the idea of doing a squat, then spend one week squatting for 8 hours a day, attached to a pair of skis or a snowboard!

There are many different technical aspects to both skiing and snowboarding that require your muscles to work a lot harder than usual, and after a few consecutive days carving down the mountain, unprepared bodies will have had enough!

Skiing and snowboarding are sports which provide a comprehensive full-body workout. The act of squatting down and transferring your body weight from left to right requires stability, flexibility, strength and control across your lower body, core and upper body. Training your body in specific ways can also help to improve your skills on the slopes too. Take skiing for example, if you haven’t got the flexibility or strength in your hips to be able to hold a deep squat, you won’t be low enough to the ground when cornering making it impossible to create tight turns.

At Chapman Physiotherapy, we have a wide range of equipment in our state-of-the-art gym to get you “ski-fit”. If you have a current or previous injury you would like advice on, see one of our Specialist Physiotherapists for assessment and treatment. Alternatively, if you would like a personalised training programme to improve your fitness specific to winter sports, book in with our Personal Trainer to make your ski or snowboard holiday more enjoyable!